Fitness - Built For Action
Consider: the Stone Age is now thousands of years
back in the past.
With every passing era, early man took changing
centuries in his stride. Like all animals, he was created to be on his
feet. At first, he chased, hunted. Then; he combined these activities
with farming. But he remained on his feet. Upright. And when the sun
set, he lay down, back and legs straight out. The Industrial
Revolution ushered in modernity. That progressive element which had
crept into our lives could have been used constructively. But it only
made us the sedentary animals we are today. We get out of bed to sit
down for breakfast. We travel, or try to travel, on our rumps to work.
Once there, we work .on our seats. Coming home is a rewind of the
journey to work. Then, we sit down before the TV-VCR till the
calorie-chair beckons us to dine, and sleep nods us to bed. It's truly,
backside to the future. Get the picture? The operative word, the
key to our lifestyle, is sit, which even as it rhymes is, the very
antithesis of fit. If we are critics of your armchair, it's with
reason. If by living in the lap of luxury, man is losing his spine and
finds modern life a pain in the backside, the reason often is just
below him. The chair and he have conspired to be on a sit-down strike
against nature. In the process, we deaden ourselves - physically
and mentally - because we don't bother to break out of our numbing
lifestyle. We don't allow nature's exercise - standing, walking,
bending - to revitalize our muscles. We don't allow those vital active
processes to pour more oxygen into us. We are our enemies - ruining
ourselves in a quiet but violent way. And as terrorism breeds in a
politically criminalized society, heart attacks breed in our violated
bodies. Rebels have realised that to get politicians to hear
them, they have to jolt them. It begins with asking, then shouting, and
finally, physical violence. Similarly, our body begins to rebel. The
symptoms are many - obesity, aches and pains and finally, the terrorism
of a heart attack. You can't afford to slow down in your life in
the fast lane. So, work tensions, the philosophy of all work and no
play combined with a sedentary lifestyle make you worse than a dull boy. What
happens if you leave your vehicle unused for days in the garage? The
battery runs down, of course. The same thing happens to an unworked
body. With more than 50 per cent of his body being muscle, today it is
medical men - even more than bodybuilders - who say we are what our
muscles make us. In the course of centuries, man's evolution from
the leafy jungle to the concrete one, has left him with more muscles
than he normally uses. Man was built for action - not atrophy. While
our historical heritage gives us an insight into our natural selves, it
is scientific know-how that adds an understanding to our perceptions.
And the foundation of science itself is based on observing the simple ,
yet wondrous things that happen all around us.
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